Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
116. The Six-Year Estate Battle No One Should Have to Fight
Death comes for us all, but the administrative nightmare that follows doesn't have to haunt your loved ones for years. In this eye-opening episode of Know Your Money, we sit down with Jakes, a candidate attorney who shares his ongoing six-year battle to settle his father's estate—a cautionary tale that might just save your family from similar anguish.
Jake walks us through the cascading problems caused by his father's 30-year-old will. When his father passed away in 2019, what should have been a straightforward process became an administrative labyrinth. With parents who had divorced, remarried, and divorced again, the outdated will left the family vulnerable to legal complications that continue to this day in 2025.
The story takes a particularly troubling turn when Jakes describes the bank's role as executor. After initially denying possession of the will, they later demanded substantial upfront fees before beginning their duties. We explore the shocking moment when Jake's family couldn't access funds for the funeral despite his father having arranged payment before his death, forcing them to postpone the burial. After two years of difficulties, the bank resigned as executor, leaving the family in legal limbo.
Property complications, unexpected tax liabilities, and mounting costs add layers of complexity to Jake's story. His professional legal insight makes this more than just a personal tragedy—it's a masterclass in what can go wrong when estate planning is neglected. Before you dismiss updating your will as something that can wait, listen to this episode and reconsider. Your family's peace of mind might depend on it. Share this episode with someone whose future decisions could be transformed by Jake's powerful testimony.
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Hello everybody, welcome to Know your Money. I'm Bronwyn Wehner.
Speaker 2:And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast you enjoy our podcast, hi viewers.
Speaker 1:So Jakes has been with us and talking about wills, and today he wants to actually talk about his own experience of what has happened, and he is an attorney.
Speaker 3:A candidate attorney. A candidate attorney Almost admitted.
Speaker 1:So he wants to just explain exactly what has happened with him, just to highlight the importance of having a will. So thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thank you guys. Thank you John and Warren. So the importance of having a will you can just take my case as an example, because my dad passed away in 2019 and we're now in 2025. And his estate is far from being wound up because when he passed on we had to, because all of these documents weren't in place. I had to go and scramble and find documents. That's important to just report the estate and all the assets that he had available, which we had. Most of that we were unaware of. We established that a bank has been appointed as the executors and the will has not been amended since 1990. That was 2019. And 1990, that's like almost 30 years that hasn't been updated. So that just indicates how important it is to have your will amended regularly.
Speaker 3:As life happens In the meantime, when that will was drafted, my parents then got a divorce. He remarried, he got a divorce again, so he died without any spouses. But since the will mentioned, he had three children and his wife at the time, which is my mother. She is the residuary heir and we are legatees and the legatees are just you make available a certain amount of money and you say this is what they will get. Now the problems that come from that is like I said. My dad got a divorce. My mom in the meantime got remarried and the law states that if you don't change your your will within three months after remarriage, then your former spouse still gets what's what's in your in your will so am I hearing you state that your dad remarried someone else but because he didn't update the will, your mom still inherits everything, and his, his wife after that doesn't get it.
Speaker 3:If he had a wife that was still alive and they were still married, but he, they got divorced as well. But let's just hypothetically say they were still married, then the new wife will got enough. Legally speaking, that's it. Legally speaking, we got nothing.
Speaker 1:Because the will said, everything goes to your mum.
Speaker 4:Even if the new wife was married in a community of property, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:It doesn't matter she will have got her half share of the estate, but anything that forms part of his estate goes straight to the first vows.
Speaker 1:And then did your dad have any other children after?
Speaker 3:No, it was just the three of us.
Speaker 1:So the will that was done had your mum and you and your two siblings on. Yes, is that what the will had?
Speaker 3:That's what the will said, so it just mentioned the children, so that could have been any children at the time of making of the will and the spouse at the time, okay, gets the property that he had, then gets given to my mom because she's the uh, don't get the word the fiduciary, I'm not a fiduciary, she's the usufruct holder. The usufruct holder means you make available a property. That's quite important when you deal with wills and with estate planning because that that prevents someone from, let's say, get remarried from someone your next partner to then take that asset. But yes, she was the use of fractal holder, which means she can use the property until she passes on.
Speaker 1:And then who was the property actually left?
Speaker 3:to To the children.
Speaker 1:So basically a usufruct is his mum is allowed to stay in that house, but the house wasn't left to her, it was left to the kids. And then, because it wasn't left to her, that whole estate duty thing will come into play, because now the kids may have to pay estate duty. But then there are calculations for you 3.5 million.
Speaker 4:Can I just go back? So how was it that you found out a bank was the executor?
Speaker 1:And why go find the will and not just say he died?
Speaker 3:Because you need to at least have made some sort of effort. Because you need to at least have made some sort of effort. So at first I asked the bank do you have this role? Because I didn't know. I could see it was banking with this certain bank. Maybe they have a will. They came back to me they said they don't have a will, they've got nothing. So I went to another financial service provider, which he had some policies, and they said no, they don't have a will.
Speaker 4:Does the executor have to have a copy of the will to be the executor?
Speaker 3:Uh no, the master's officers keeps the original.
Speaker 4:What I mean is if I'm, if I'm, for example, um, an executor of of a family member's will, um, just as an example, um and and our. Should I have a copy of that, will you?
Speaker 3:you get the copy. So in my case, the bank eventually came forward and they said oh, we do have a will. That's after me having to run around.
Speaker 1:So I think what Warren's asking is is it the executor's responsibility to keep that will for the clients?
Speaker 3:Because you perhaps don't know who's going to be appointed as the executor. So in this case the will was almost 30 years old. So it was only a bank was nominated.
Speaker 4:Okay, but may we actually go to what you were saying there for a second right. So you said eventually the bank did find the will, Eventually they did In the meantime?
Speaker 3:How?
Speaker 4:long did that take?
Speaker 3:About two weeks or longer. Well, maybe, maybe no. Yes, they found the world within two weeks, I think. In that time I had to bury my father. There was money available because he said before he died, that needs to be paid over. So this was paid over and it was sitting in the in the cart. I had to make payments for funerals and they were just like not having it.
Speaker 4:So there was no assistance from the bank. No assistance.
Speaker 3:I even went.
Speaker 1:So the bank account got frozen basically is what you're saying and you couldn't use the money.
Speaker 3:No, the bank account wasn't frozen yet, but the money, because they said there was just sorts of issues and the money was just hanging in card and I said well, they wouldn't allow you to withdraw money for a from that account.
Speaker 3:That was before he passed right, okay, but then you know that been on the on around the same time when he was, was was on on his on his last breath and he said you know that money must be paid and it was paid and he was just in this in the card, and it's been a week and we need to make payments for funerals and the bankers.
Speaker 4:Just your father actioned a payment before he passed away, yes, that same day, and it was never received by you.
Speaker 3:It was never received and then we had to make payments and I went how, how is that? How's that okay? It wasn't okay because I had to postpone the burial by a few days in order for us. But now the children had to come with and he had a funeral policy. But there was some money that they said we must pay, and it was recovered afterwards. But at that time we needed the money and we were like, okay, well, let's, let's pay this?
Speaker 4:that's that blows my. He actioned a payment to pay for all this, and it was withheld effectively.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was paid to another account, which is same names, but it was my account, and they were like, looking, is that fraud, what? But he's been making payments to that account that is unbelievable For years and so on and we couldn't make that. But on the point of the bank, they appoint themselves as the executors as per the will. And for people that don't understand, because they always say it's a free will, so you think, okay, it's free will, everything will be sorted. The bank came after and they said it looks like there's not enough money in the account. We want 3.5% even before we start it. So they looked at the assets that's available After.
Speaker 3:I've been able to have a discussion with them to understand even what is it that you guys need? Because now they send me the wall, like I say it's taken about, taken about two weeks. It's taken me up until two months after, up until because he passed in August, taken me up until October, I think. Just to be able to speak to someone I had to go into the offices, the branches. Several of my family members had to go. So we can understand. How do we need to report this? In the meantime, we've reported this to the master's offices.
Speaker 4:So you did that yourselves instead of, we did that ourselves.
Speaker 3:Then the bank called me one day and they said listen, we want to now just take an inventory of the assets so that we can start. So they sent me a whole list of documents to say this is what they need. I told them what the assets are. Then after that they decided okay, this is the preliminary L&D account. We need 80,000 Rand from you guys.
Speaker 4:Before they'll do anything. Yes, is that normal? Will an executor usually take the 3.5% before anything is done?
Speaker 3:The 3.5% from us, from how we are dealing with matters, is always done after or if there's money available. So whatever comes first, but they wanted it comes first, but they wanted it up front. They wanted it up front. So they wanted the thing. They wanted me to pay 10 000 before they started touching the account or the estate. So I had to come up with the 10 000, which I didn't have at the time. But I had to make a plan.
Speaker 3:So I got the 10and they send me documents to say that we require you to pay the rest of the money, which is then 70,000 rand. So you need to, between your siblings, decide how are you going to pay this, so only one person gets to sign the document. So you remind yourself that I'm going to pay the rest of the 70,000 rand. So you are liable. For that money you are liable, and if money, you are liable. And if you don't pay, well, they give you a list and you can decide how you're going to sell your property. If you're going to sell your property through auction, you can just know the bank will probably oversee that They'll take a lowball offer just to get the money in, won't they?
Speaker 4:They?
Speaker 3:will probably do that. So eventually we just have been, you know, giving them the ups and downs and they could see that this is going to be a very difficult estate to handle.
Speaker 1:And then they sounded over to you, right, then they resigned and they left us in limbo. So are you handling it?
Speaker 3:I had to handle that and it was during covert. It's taken up to about from 2021 or 2020, they resigned Two years for me to get letters of executorship In that time, everything is mount.
Speaker 3:The reliability is continuing to rise. It's continuing to rise and after I got the letters of executorship because you can't do anything before that, you're not legally able to start the estate, so you're just playing and just trying to get everything sorted. So I got appointed as the executor and I had a property because this is the importance of having a will I had and for your estate planning, my father. He met a woman. They weren't married. He bought the property with his pension money, but it was on both their names.
Speaker 3:So you can see the problem is that, like I said previously, previously my mom had a usufruct over because there were two properties. But just before he passed on he signed that over to her in terms of an agreement, in terms of the divorce, that she will get the property. So that property was out of the question. The other property that he purchased between him and another woman with expansion money was the issue, because now we can't have her as the usufruct of that property because she owns only half share. The other half share belongs to the other woman, so we can't sell the property because we need to get her permission.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:Now.
Speaker 1:This just highlights how.
Speaker 3:Important.
Speaker 1:Important it is to have a will.
Speaker 4:And to this day it's still going on. Hey, yeah, it's still going on.
Speaker 3:So we managed to sell the property. She managed to sign the property over to the children, because that's what she said she was going to do, but you're still liable for 20% donations to access.
Speaker 1:Sure, Sorry, we're going to have to stop there because the guy that's coming needs to get on an aeroplane. So I don't mean to cut it short.
Speaker 4:No, that's fine, Absolutely astounding right.
Speaker 1:Yes, and our opening Thank you for being here and sharing your story so openly, because I think it just highlights again the importance of getting a sound will and just speaking to someone that has had experience of what can go wrong.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me and being able to just tell you the story A real life happening.
Speaker 1:Yes, thanks, jake.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, Jake. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website, wwwgrowthfpcoza. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.